
Kevin Connolly	Geek. Developer. Entrepreneur. All-around good guy. Builder of things. Solver of problems. Changer of worlds.

Poor Mans Workflow for Dummies

Posted 9/22/2008 6:37:27 PM

For the past week or so, I've been working on adding a feature to a product. This feature must find the primary SMS contact number for a given Policy. Once I figured out the right way to go, I had the query done in a matter of minutes. I had it in the codebase in under an hour. It took so long because of all the overhead (many tests, process documentation, etc) we do at my Major Insurance Provider. Then I was told it had to go into one of our many Legacy codebases.

It's been downhill since then.

I opened up the Source Control database for the Legacy codebase. I was awe-struck to find no less than 35 solutions and 350 projects. After much deliberation and some minor tree walking, I found my way into the solution that included the Webservice.

Then I tried to build it.

Project build failed; are you missing an assembly reference? Twenty assembly references missing. So I downloaded the remainder of the Poor Man's Workflow legacy codebase, thus resolving two dependencies. I opened up a second copy of the now-archaic Visual Studio 2003, loaded the project for the first dependency, built it, and moved the assembly to the assigned BuildOutput folder. 17 to go. I got through seven of them before I thought of something.

I had to be connected to the server containing the source.

While connected to the Legacy codebase VSS database, I ran a netstat. One open connection was to the new codebase on a server I recognized. Another was to the same server name, but with a different and much lower number (i.e. servername01 instead of servername27). So I browsed to \\servername01\ and found my codebase's source control repository.

I could now perform a Search.

I found pre-built assemblies for the remaining 10 projects and a total of 50 sub-assemblies which were required by the 17 projects required by the actual solution I wished to build. After a solid hour of recon, I had a Webservice that ran. It took one parameter.

SerializedRequest? Where do I find that?

I tried the syntax we used for the SerializedRequest of a different service, which obviously didn't work. This shop thought it was Agile, so it wouldn't have any documentation... Or would it? Quickly, I browsed to my group's Sharepoint site and searched for the WebMethod name. Five results returned. I opened one labeled "ExampleSyntax.doc", containing a solitary line of XML.

I had my Request string.

I fed it into the WebMethod and Invoked. I waited for two minutes while the process ran, not hitting a single one of my breakpoints. My request had timed out, but I was browsing to a site being hosted on Localhost!

Ahh, here it is: The WebMethod actually calls another WebMethod in a far away land, which in turn actually performs the chore of connecting to DB2.

I'd had enough. I went home.

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